It's funny, my PhD advisor Dr. Goodrich-Blair would also tell stories about those exact lectures. Must have made an incredible impression! I'll do some reading and find out if anything looks like what we see in our episymbionts. I do think we're just about ready to dive into CPR regulation pathways.
That being said, pilin expression and pili-dependent twitching is induced by host exposure. We have quantified piliation of unattached cells (~7 per cell) via CryoEM, however the host cells are so much more electron dense that we could not quantify from an attached cell. 2/2 doi.org/10.1093/isme...
Hello Steve! I wish I had a better answer for you, we are looking, but we do not know yet how Saccharibacteria are regulating their natural competence. We know they have 2 distinct pili (thick and thin) and a T4SS. The thin pili isn't needed for competence, but the thick pili of T4SS could be? 1/2
Ultrasmall episymbiont Nanosynbacter lyticus employs multiple ATP-generating metabolic pathways during horizontal transmission #microsky 🧪
academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...
So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth!
#protistsonsky 🧵
Hello everyone, take a look at my cool bugs from the Microbial Dark Matter phylum Saccharibacteria! These ultrasmall bacteria (in green) track down Actinobacteria hosts (not in green) and grow on the host cell envelope.
Exciting progress! In our new preprint, we show that episymbiont Saccharibacteria can directly modulate epithelial immunity—a big step in understanding how these elusive microbes interact with the human host. Kudos to Deepak Chouhan and our amazing collaborators! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
New paper out! We searched for cargo across thousands of Type 11 Secretion Systems (T11SS) in Proteobacteria and uncovered 2,500+ predicted secreted proteins, including 6 novel cargo types, with experimental verification of a new surface lipoprotein, Pls. doi.org/10.1099/mgen.0.001406
Excited to share our new preprint on the detailed investigation of Type 4 pili in epibiont oral Saccharibacteria! Led by Alex Grossman from our lab, and with Jun Liu (Yale), Jeff McLean (UW) and Xuesong He. Check it out: biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
